Traditional over the air broadcast mediums, such as AM/FM radio and television, provide a relatively limited selection of program material that is intended to have the broadest appeal to the largest possible audience. Radio stations generally follow a set programming format, typically coupled with a particular genre of music that is designed to attract a target listening audience. Broadcast television stations, while somewhat constrained to the prime-time entertainment and national news offering of their network affiliations, follow similar guidelines for local broadcasts. The introduction of cable and satellite television programming simultaneously increased the number of channels available to subscribers and the amount and diversity of available program content. This trend has continued in recent years with an ever-broadening array of more and more specialized programming channels (e.g., the Food Channel, the History Channel, etc.) that address specific viewer interests.
Nevertheless, the programmed delivery of these diverse program content channels remained passive until the advent and wide-spread adoption of the digital video recorder (DVR). It is now possible for subscribers to not only time shift the consumption of their preferred video content, but to also selectively record video content corresponding to their viewing preferences through the automatic and dynamic generation of viewer profiles. Satellite radio has undergone a similar evolution and currently offers numerous channels providing a broad selection of musical genres programmed to appeal to an equally wide variety of target audiences. However, satellite radio offerings are still passive as they fail to offer an opportunity for the user to customize and interact with their program content. While users may be free to choose from the genre of music they listen to by selecting a particular station, they do not have the ability to further customize the selected station to their personal preferences.
Furthermore, real-time broadcast signals, including those of satellite radio, can be lost, resulting in the user's listening experience being interrupted. As an alternative, the user can download digital media files to a traditional media player. The current popularity of the MP3 music format has proven it to be an effective solution for creating a highly portable and customized selection of music content. However, large digital music libraries still require significant time and effort to manage and the media players that contain them are often complex to operate. Conversely, simpler-to-use digital media players are often limited in memory capacity or file management capability, so the user must waste time manually deleting files in order to download additional ones.